


I Talk to Walls

by GoggleBox



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: FWP, Fluff without Plot, Forensics, M/M, Ziam if you squint, but it's there i swear, forensics au, speech team au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-02-15
Packaged: 2018-03-12 23:33:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3359399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoggleBox/pseuds/GoggleBox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"<a href="http://modestmgmtofficial.tumblr.com/post/98437142325/au-ideas-5-year-old-harry-playing-detective-with">AU idea</a>: both on the debate team from another school (lots of staring and stuttering and pink cheeks and answers that make no sense)"</p><p>Harry is just trying to perform a speech, but that brown-haired distraction a seat back from the front won't stop being hot, and that is kind of a big problem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Talk to Walls

**Author's Note:**

> First work on AO3! Whew, about time! ;)
> 
> I know you're supposed to be all cool-like and pretend that it's not hard to write something longer than 4 words, but...geez, writing's _hard!_ Mad respect to people that write chaptered stuff, you're insane!
> 
> I'd like to thank [Olivia](http://melodiclou.tumblr.com) for her unwavering support and beta-ing. Your notes were lovely and your enthusiasm MUCH appreciated! Thank you!
> 
> I'd also like to thank [Susan](http://modestmgmtofficial.tumblr.com) for her KICK-ASS AU prompts. This fic would not exist without your inspiration. I hope you like it. :)
> 
> And, of course, a massive thank you to my forensics team at home, who never cease to amaze me with their humor and talent. Your captain loves you! :)

Harry is going to vomit. This is a problem, because he really, really does _not_ want to vomit.

He’s not typically one to vomit, even when he’s speaking in front of a room full of people.

It was this quality in particular that qualified him to become the captain of his school’s speech team. Well, that, and his seven years of experience, but that’s just about useless right now, too.

It’s not that he’s put off by his audience; in fact, it’s just about the opposite. He’s quite into his audience, particularly one member that’s only a seat back from where Harry is standing, ironically, quite speechless.

This guy is focusing on Harry intensely, and they haven’t broken eye contact since Harry got to the front of the room. It’s good audience etiquette, and Harry tries to convince himself that this guy’s just being polite, that he’s just paying attention, that he does this to everyone, but if this guy really does look at everyone like this, he must win first at every meet.

From the back of the room, there’s a crinkle of paper, and Harry falls dizzyingly back to Earth, and fuck, how long has he been standing there? Embarrassed, he looks down at his black binder, blinking at the shiny pages like he hasn’t spent a single minute reciting them in front of a mirror. Words, some highlighted, glare off the page, and penciled in notes fill the margins. Everything mixes with the reflection of the ceiling lights on the plastic sleeves, and it looks more like a picture than a script.

Maybe he could just sit down and say “never mind” and ask the boy in the second row to take over for him instead.

Or maybe he could just jump out a window.

Both ideas would go over about the same with Coach.

Alright. Okay. Let’s go, Haz, break a leg.

He finally pries his jaw open and starts talking, trying his best to make eye contact with people other than that brown-haired distraction right in front of him.

It’s not his favorite piece he’s ever done, but it’s growing on him. Coach picked it out this year for him, claiming that he should expand beyond solo humorous at least once, see how he likes more serious stuff.

He selected a segment of _The Scarlet Ibis_ , which is one of the most overdone speeches in the whole of forensics (second only to basically anything written by Edgar Allen Poe), but it’s done its job of making him dig deeper, emotionally speaking.

It’s the story of a boy and his disabled little brother, Doodle, who learns to stand and even walk with his brother’s assistance. A red bird stops in their garden, blown in from a distant storm, and Doodle is distraught when they find it dead on the ground only hours later. Then, while on a walk, the brothers are caught in a blinding rainstorm, and the older brother runs ahead to the house, and Doodle falls in an attempt to keep up.

The story ends with the older brother finding Doodle dead in the forest. The narrator concludes with the fact that Doodle died like the scarlet ibis: scared, alone, and far from home.

So, not the best first-impression material, but, hey. It’s not the worst the prose category has to offer.

A page or so in, Harry’s mind starts wandering. It’s an awful habit, makes you recite instead of act. Harry’s caught several new kids on the team doing it, picking up on their glossed eyes and emotion that seems to float on top of their words instead of seeping out of them. But these are dire circumstances. Life or death. Kind of.

That’s what it feels like. He feels like he’s perfectly alive and dying at the same time.

And, to be honest, this would be a wonderful way to die. 

It almost hurts to look at the other people in the room. It almost feels like he’s wasting his time when his eyes lock onto the judge, onto the girl by the window, onto the guy who’s furiously biting his nails. It feels like, in a world full of people made to be looked at, the man in front was made to be _admired_.

So, Harry figures that, if his eyes can’t stay on him, at least his head can.

When he finally finishes, head down, script closed and at hip level, the handful of people applaud him all the way back to his seat. He grabs for his water bottle before he’s even sitting down, eyes latching onto the chalkboard - jesus, who uses a _chalkboard_? - while he crumples his bottle to chug as much water as he can. He’s not quite sure how he managed to make it back to his seat without falling on his face, but he’s safely perched in a chair, so he won’t complain.

Round three is done. After this, it’s lunch. He’s done performing for the morning.

He gets a break when a girl goes up and performs a piece about wanting to kill her husband, which would shock Harry if he heard it a month ago. When Coach told him that prose was a bit darker than solo humorous, he was dead serious (ha ha). The dark nature isn’t required, but Harry’s been listening to a steady stream of pieces about suicide and divorce all season, so the status quo is fairly well-established.

When she sits down to polite applause, the judge calls out a code, and the boy in front finally stands. He’s in a black three-piece suit with a blue tie. Well-fitted. Like, _really_   well-fitted. He cracks his neck, breathes deeply, adjusts his side-swept hair. Harry just stares, like this is part of his performance. He’s not sure how the judge can possibly score him rationally, because Harry would just be circling “1” and calling him the best speaker in the round before he even opened his mouth.

And then, the fucker takes off his jacket.

Harry immediately starts blushing intensely, his ears and neck burning like he’s watching a striptease. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say that this guy’s doing this on purpose, drawing it out like there’s a saxophone playing behind him and the lights are low.

Of course, with that suggestion, Harry’s mind starts reconstructing the whole scene, putting them both alone in a bedroom with candles and DAMMIT, that is NOT helping. His pants are already tight, and they’re getting tighter by the second.

He decides to change plans, and makes a halfhearted attempt to shrink himself in his seat. There _probably_   isn’t a rule that forbids audience members from curling up in a fetal position under the desk, but he’s not exactly sure.

As a final little “fuck you”, the speaker rolls up his sleeves, which nearly causes Harry to keel over. Satisfied, he picks up his binder and strides to the front.

Harry’s hard before he even hears a word, but when those lips part, Harry feels the blush surge back into his cheeks. There’s a light rasp to his voice, and it’s a bit higher than he imagined, but _damn_ if it isn’t still gorgeous. Harry’s eyes start sinking lower and lower, tracing over every button, every curve, every outline of his attire, trying to take in as much suit porn as he physically can in the ten minutes he’s allowed to stand at the front.

It takes Harry a solid four and a half minutes to notice what he’s actually saying.

It isn’t until he mentions “Portia” with non-automobile-related context that it clicks. He’s reading Ellen Degeneres’ autobiography.

Once Harry starts zeroing in on his words instead of the way his waistcoat hugs his chest, he almost enjoys himself even more. He’s actually really, really good. He’s playing up the comedic pauses, the facial expressions, the deadpan delivery, and it all fits together, and wow. After listening to a thousand pieces about death, a comedic piece is well-appreciated. Maybe it’s the nerves, or maybe he’s just that good, but Harry thinks that he laughs the loudest in the room.

When the man’s finished, he smiles and nods at the judge in the back of the room, and returns to his desk amid sincere applause from Harry. That was incredible.

They sit in silence for a minute before the judge speaks up. “Alright, looks like we’re all done! Good luck, everyone! Hope to see you in powers!”

Harry and a few competitors reply with a “thank you” before spilling out into the hallway. Ellen-Degeneres’-Autobiography-Reader-Guy is walking a bit in front of him, just a couple of meters ahead, looking at the birthday decorations and team decorations occasionally spotting the lockers. Every so often, there’s a locker sporting a paper poster that wishes the owner good luck at today’s tournament. Each one is personalized with a name drawn at the top in glitter glue.

Harry jogs to catch up. “Hey, good round, mate.”

Ellen Guy looks at him with a face straight from a star. He glows. Dammit, he _glows_ , how does he _glow?_   “Cheers, man! You, too!”

Up close, Harry can see that he’s got a bit of stubble around his chin and above his lip. He wants to trace over it with his fingertips, or maybe his tongue. He sticks to speaking instead. “It’s nice to get a break from the tragic pieces for a bit. You killed it in there, everyone was laughing, even the judge.”

Ellen Guy’s mouth springs into a smile. He’s got his jaw relaxed a bit, so Harry can see his tongue behind his lower teeth, and Harry wishes he could just hug him already, kiss him already, anything. “Thanks, man. You were ace, too. That’s an intense piece, good job!”

Harry isn’t sure if blushing is medically dangerous in high amounts. If it is, the past half hour has been enough to shave a solid decade off of his life. He squeezes out a fast “thank you” before he can start gushing or something.

They walk in smooth silence to the cafeteria and stop to stare at the food line.

“Must’ve gotten out late,” Harry says, because the line for food is the length of several school busses parked end to end. An entire wall of the cafeteria is covered in the dark suits and white blouses of the attendees. It’s going to be half an hour just to get up to the start of the buffet line, if not longer.

Ellen Guy looks over at Harry. Harry looks over at him. Ellen Guy yanks up an eyebrow. “Shall we?”

So they wait in line together, discussing their rounds. They end up exchanging names not long into the wait, and Ellen Guy offers a handshake, and they both laugh over the late introduction. His name is Louis.

Obviously, the conversation tends to hover around forensics. Louis recalls his first round, where the first speaker did a piece on suicide. “Not quite the way you want to start your morning,” he says with a shrug, “but I guess that’s what us nerds do. We wake up at five in the bloody morning to talk about death.”

Harry tops that with a speaker from his last tournament, who did a piece about a school shooting. “It was kinda weird, actually,” Harry says. “She had this really weird voice for when she was talking from the shooter’s point of view. It was half-Joker, half-Miss Piggy.” Louis bursts into laughter, which makes Harry laugh a bit, too. “I’m not kidding! It was so bizarre.”

After forty-five minutes of banter, they finally step through the buffet. Harry picks up a bowl of spaghetti, a banana, and a brownie. For someone who almost exclusively sat or stood in one place for the past few hours, he’s famished.

After they pay, Harry does a mock curtsy, careful not to spill his lunch. “It’s been a pleasure, Louis.” They shared where their teams are sitting while they were line, each pointing to opposite ends of the cafeteria. As much as he’d love to follow Louis to his table, he should probably check in with his team, see how they’re doing.

Louis smiles back. “That it has! Hope to see you at powers!” His eyebrows and shoulders pull up when he says the last bit.

Power rounds are like championship rounds. The best of each category are selected according their rankings in each room, and their speaker codes are posted on one of the cafeteria walls. If you make it to the power round, you’re automatically a runner-up, even if you don’t place in the top three.

It’s intense. Out of the fifty (or more) speakers in the prose category, only five or six will be selected for the power round.

Harry nods. If Louis doesn’t make it to powers, Harry will quit forensics altogether. He’s a shoo-in, he has to be, even in a tournament this big.

They exchange a final wave, and then Harry’s alone with his food, staring at the most beautiful back he’s ever seen.

The cafeteria feels huge all of a sudden. It’s years before he’s sitting across from Niall, who’s too busy stuffing his face to see him sit down. Harry’s queuing up the words to talk about Louis, talk about his suit and his hair and his face and his everything, but he looks at Niall’s plate and his mouth drops open. “Jesus, Niall, how much food do you need?”

Niall finally jerks his head up. A piece of lettuce waves feebly out of his mouth, covered in what’s probably ice cream or something. “How d’you doh?” The leaf wobbles free after a word or two lands in his bowl of chilli.

Harry shakes his head with a smile. “Not bad, you?”

It takes a couple of huge chomps before Niall has the ability to talk again. “Good! There’s only a couple people in radio this tourney.”

Niall’s been into DJ-ing since he snuck into his first club at the age of fourteen. While he can’t quite snag a job as a radio DJ at seventeen years old, he’s deemed radio announcing in forensics better than nothing.

It’s one of the few impromptu categories, meaning that he doesn’t have a set speech when he walks into the school. Instead, he’s given a few news stories at the start of the round, and he has a set amount of time to string them together to sound smooth. Niall says it’s great practice for when he’s older.

Harry smiles. “Hey, at least it’s a guaranteed sixth place or whatever.”

Niall leans over and grabs a hunk of Harry’s noodles. “It’s eh guaranteed _first_ place, Harold.” He slowly places the forkful - the _entire_ forkful - into his mouth, staring back at Harry the entire time. “I’m _alwathe_ ah garuhteed firth plathe.”

Harry looks him up and down with a smirk. Cocky arsehole. Alright, let’s play, little man. “You got a spot on your jacket, mate.”

Niall jumps up and nearly falls over the back of the bench, mouth still crammed with spaghetti, frantically pulling at every inch of his blazer. Harry can hear him breathing quickly from across the table, which is impressive, because Harry’s wheezing so hard, he’s struggling to stay upright.

“Niall, mate, I-” He can’t do it. He can’t even breathe. He’s sobbing with laughter, and when he opens his eyes and sees Niall glaring at him with narrow eyes and still-stuffed cheeks, he just laughs even harder.

After a few deep breaths and several wet swipes across his eyes, Harry’s right-side-up again, and Niall is...wow, he looks deadly. “Not funneh, Harreh.”

Harry tilts his head and tucks in his lips. “It was, though.”

Niall gives him a nice display of a certain finger, and Harry sticks his tongue out in response, swinging his legs back over the bench to stand.

He makes his rounds about the table, checking in on the rest of the team. Ben, a solo serious actor, says he fumbled round one, but made up for it in rounds two and three. Gemma says that her judge was writing non-stop the entire time in round three...for better or for worse, she couldn’t tell.

Harry keeps making desperate looks over his shoulder at the other end of the cafeteria, but doesn’t see Louis again.

However, he does see a group forming at one of the walls close to them. Then a crowd. Then a mob.

Harry cranes to stand on his tiptoes and sees a man with a poster-sized piece of paper walking along the wall, and the teens step back in reverence as he goes.

The power postings.

Harry shouts “POWERS!” at the table and then jogs over to join the increasingly-loud group. The crowd’s gotten huge, so he stands on the nearby bench of a table and squints. The top of the paper says “Radio” in bright red letters. He can’t remember Niall’s exact code, but it starts with “24”, their school number, and he’s the only radio person on the team, so at least he isn’t helpless here.

There’s a head blocking the bottom-left of the paper. Dammit, head, move it.

And then it does, and there it is. 24R9. Niall’s advancing. There’s only four people on the paper, meaning that there’s probably only eight people in his category, but still.

Harry turns and shouts back to the table. “NIALL!” A blonde pops his head around, and Harry gives him a thumbs-up. He gets a fist pump in return, and then what he thinks is a victory dance. That, or he’s having some strange seizure.

When he regains composure, Niall mouths “What room?” and Harry uses his fingers to spell it out. Then he’s gone, dodging through adults to the double doors, looking like the happiest little leprechaun in all the land.

Harry turns back around to look at the other new posters, but doesn’t see one for him yet. He figures that he’s on some prime real estate, though, so he stays on the bench, looking over the crowd, and then he sees him, right there at the front, his jacket folded over his arm.

Louis is chatting with a really fit blonde, then laughing, probably at something he said. For a single, frozen moment, Harry thinks that they’re together, and he doesn’t breathe.

Of course. Of course he does. Of course he has one.

He can’t even say “boyfriend” in his head.

He looks away and runs his fingers through his hair and pushes it to the side, tries to make himself feel busy, like it doesn’t bother him. There’s a part of his head that’s knotting up, and the rest of him is trying to untie it.

Niall’s been shoving him at boys since they were sixteen. Maybe Harry should just tell him to stop, because this just hurts, it hurts so bad, and they weren’t even together.

Like, they weren’t even _together_.

It just feels...like a missed opportunity. Like he did something wrong. Like he had the wrong idea at the wrong time and now he’s underwater, watching everyone else from below the surface, and they don’t even notice that he’s gone.

He pulls his eyes back to look at Louis again, and there’s a black-haired man now, murmuring into the fit blonde’s ear, his chin on his shoulder. The blonde turns to him and laughs, and then gives him a peck on the forehead. Louis is just looking at the posters on the wall. 

In and out. In. And out. He can breathe again.

Louis looks over at the two of them, and then Harry’s heart bursts, because he smiles at them.

The world’s come pretty far, in terms of gay rights. Harry in particular has been fortunate enough to forget about prejudice a good portion of the time. He’s lucky enough to be in a good part of town, comfortable enough to be out to almost everyone he knows.

But the fact that he knows how lucky he is means that there’s still work to be done. So every indication of support is overwhelming. Even if Louis isn’t into guys, at least he’s not spitting at every gay couple he sees, so that’s alright.

He sees someone point out of the corner of his eye. He follows their finger to find two people in casual shirts and jeans, each carrying rolled up sheets, parading to their corner. The crowd goes nuts, the noise increasing exponentially as people start to notice them.

They spread out evenly, like clockwork. One man tapes up the top of a sheet, using his torso to smush the rolled-up part against the wall to keep it hidden. When he’s done, he turns and looks at the crowd and mouths “ready?”. Cheeky bastard.

When he lets go and the paper falls, there are a few excited shrieks and gasps. People smile and offer hugs and then shoo their mates away to find their room.

Harry rolls up his sleeve to check his code. It’s annoying to have to keep track of an extra sheet of paper, so he’s started writing his code in pen on his forearm, tucked away under his white long-sleeve and suit jacket. 24E1. He chants in his head when he looks back up. 24E1, 24E1, 24E1.

He goes down the list, checking each code for a match. 24E1? 24E1? It goes so slow, he starts to worry. But then there it is. 24E1.

He floats back to the table and nods at one of the teammates and picks up his binder and doesn’t stop walking until he’s out the double doors and standing in the hallway.

So. He made it.

Then someone runs past him and suddenly he needs to sit down, or maybe just lie on the ground for a little while.

You can never get used to it. It’s been years since his first power round, and it still feels exactly the same.

Blood is thud-thud-thudding through his ears when he takes to the stairs. Whoever put power rounds on the third floor is a sadist, seriously.

It looks like an awkward business party when he finds the room, with well-dressed young adults milling about outside the door, waiting for the judge. A few whisper to each other. Others look through their binders anxiously. Harry likes the idea of the latter, so he flips through script, and if he doesn’t actually read anything, then, well, who has to know?

So, it turns out to be a bit of a shock when he gets a tap on the shoulder. And Louis is standing there.

_Shoo-in._

“You made it,” Harry says, mostly to Louis’ neck. It’s a really pretty neck. Makes everyone else’s neck look like a giraffe’s. It’s _obscene_ , that’s what it is, just bloody obscene.

Louis smiles, but it isn’t even a smile, because you can’t call that a smile. That’d just tarnish it, calling it that, because it’s worth far more than that. He grins, he shines, he blesses people. Harry’s been baptized. He’s seen God.

“So did you!” Louis sings.

Oh, yeah. He keeps forgetting.

Harry smiles in reply. They made it. Both of them. Years from now, maybe he’ll call this their first date.

They don’t talk for the rest of the time, which is fine. It’s absolutely fine.

When the judge lets them into the room, Harry touches Louis’ arm and nods. Louis’ eyes crinkle back.

Damn, he’s fucked.

.:.

“First again. Two for two. Jesus, save some gold for the rest of us.”

Harry smiles back. “Don’t you leprechauns have enough gold as it is?”

Niall sticks out his tongue. “Shut it, Styles.” He shoves his hands in his pockets, shielding them from the brisk breeze picking up as they walk to the bus. He looks at the ground. “Like leprechauns could ever have enough gold.”

The idea sparks a scene in Harry’s head of Niall skipping about picking up gold coins and flicking them into a pot, which is particularly funny, because it isn’t a far cry from Niall’s typical behavior.

“Harry!”

Niall looks at Harry. Harry looks at Niall. Niall twitches his eyebrows. How fucking mature.

Harry turns around to watch Louis jog towards them. “First place, alright!” he shouts. When he gets closer, Louis laughs and claps a hand on Harry’s shoulder. “Knew you’d do well!”

“Second’s pretty nice, too!” Harry smiles. Well, okay, he was smiling already, but now he’s making a conscious effort to. He probably looks like a dork.

“Sure, sure,” Louis says, but dips his head down. “Enjoy it while you can.” He’s got the tracings of a smile working around his mouth, and his eyes have a bit of light glimmering about.

“Is that a challenge?” Harry’s voice twists up near the end. He was going to call Louis by his last name, but he forgot it already. Shame, really, because he’d need it if he wanted to write his dream name in all his notebooks. ‘Mr. Harry Styles-whatshisname.’ Maybe put a heart around it.

Louis grins. “Sure, let’s call it one.”

And they hold hands. Well, they shake hands, but there’s hand-on-hand action, so, close enough.

Harry’s ears feel like they’re popping and, yep, there goes his stupid blush. It’s all feels so close and intimate, and he doesn’t catch what Louis is saying until he’s halfway through.

“...if that’s alright?”

Harry blinks. “Sorry?"

“Oh, sorry, I was just wondering if you wanted to. Um. I mean, we could see if we’re going to the same meets.”

His hand is still tingling a bit. That should probably be concerning. “You’re...you’re asking for my number?”

Louis shakes his head and drops his jaw a little, so Harry can see his tongue sitting behind his teeth. “No, no, never mind, no.”

“Wait, no, I’m sorry. I just didn’t hear you the first time.”

“Oh.”

Harry stares at him for a second. Oh, his phone. He jams a hand into his pocket and pulls it out. “Sure, uh, I’ll give you mine first.”

Louis smiles and nods.

.:.

Harry gets his score sheets back on the bus. When he gets to the sheet from round three, there’s a 2 written and circled at the top, marking him as the second best speaker in the room. Harry reads through the comments and criticisms, staring when he reaches the bottom. He passes the other rounds’ score sheets back to Coach for cataloging, but keeps this one, purely for the final note.

“ _great interpretation of a great piece. good luck with that lad in the front._ ;)”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!! Have a great day!!


End file.
